Friday Inspiration

It's a beautiful day in Southern California and I'm itching to head to the beach. But, some work needs to be done before I sneak out a little early this afternoon. Going through some emails and files quickly provided some inspiration to keep me fired up: some great outreach from the Plastic Pollution Coalition and video of humans helping a dolphin tangled up in fishing gear. It's the kind of stuff that keeps me aiming to reduce plastic pollution every day. You can't take a day off and it's not hard. Lead by example this weekend and pick up a few pieces of litter from the beach, in the park, or around town. Every bit matters.

Check out this great installation the Plastic Pollution Coalition had in Vancouver in 2010, doctoring up the sculpture to raise awareness for plastic pollution...

Last week, video came out of San Diego showing lifeguards freeing a dolphin that was tangled up in someone's fishing gear. It's wonderful to see but I wonder how many perish without our help? An outdated estimate of plastic pollution impacts states that 100,000 marine mammals die every year from plastic ingestion or entanglement. We can't rely on 'end of the pipe' solutions to clean up plastic trash, we need more source reductions such as bag bans, foam foodware bans and extended producer responsibility for manufactuers.